Thomson Reuters general counsel for global emerging markets, Bijoya Roy, has taken up the position to head Flipkart in Bangalore under its new Walmart owners.

She succeeds interim general counsel Grant Coad, who had flown over to India from Walmart Canada after the US retail giant’s record acquisition of the Indian(ish) unicorn, alongside a bunch of other senior Walmart executives.

Roy will be reporting to Walmart Asia senior vice president, chief administrative officer and its Asia general counsel.

We have reached out to her for comment.

Roy is a 2002 Symbiosis Law School Pune graduate with a postgraduate diploma in European competition law from King’s College London. She had begun her career at the Tata Housing Development Company, moved to Asian Paints in 2004, followed by Kodak Eastmann in 2005.

In 2008 she had joined Thomson Reuters in London, moving up the ranks from senior legal counsel EMEA in London, to UAE-based chief counsel MENA, Sub-Saharan Africa, Russia/CIS, and in 2017 to general counsel (GC) of so-called global growth organisation (global emerging markets).

Flipkart had seen a fair bit of turnover at the top of its legal team, losing GC Rajinder Sharma in 2016, only a year after he’d joined from Samsung. His predecessor was Srivals Kumar.

She will also be joining at a challenging time in Indian e-commerce regulation, particularly for foreign-owned companies that have been impacted hard by new, more restrictive FDI rules that could see increasing competition from deep-pocketed domestic players.

To date, Khaitan & Co has been Flipkart’s go-to corporate legal adviser, for the most part, while Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas had worked closely with Walmart in the acquisition.

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Damn! She must me really good to become WalKart GC (sic.). Though haven't heard of her much (or her e-com. experience, if any), probably because I have only worked in law firms. Can someone shed some more light on her bio? Any major deals or any major product launch assistance/ compliance or any major assit in setting up a regulated business?

No everything is about deals my friend.Here her expertise as a strategist for government policy will come into effect.She is to play a pivotal role on whether Walmart is able to sustain in India after all.

Even though the attrition rate is so high in TR (higher than that in KCO, SAM/CAM), a lot of people return back to TR.We receive countless CVs where it seems to be a general trend that people leave TR only to return after a few years and then apply elsewhere after a year of returning. Difficult to make sense of........

While that has been a standard practice, the amount that c lass executive earn is roughly 1/3 of the CEO's compensation, start ups as we have seen do not follow the same trend.

Here is an interesting fact: SVP working in flipkart back in 2015 got an average package of 11 to 12 cr and their counterpart in amazon got around 2. (this is based out of an article I read during their walmart take over, the article was titled "why flipkart is bleeding" or something like that.)

The GC here was appointed after taking approval from the board and given the tumultuous time ahead for Walmart, I won't be surprised if she is made a board member (legal or policy)

Peanut bhai, while you talking of 14-18 crore INR- I have a feeling that rarely, if any, would an Indian in-house/ GC cross 60mn (6 crore INR). Salaries of senior management were earlier visible in annual reports and you can make a more informed guess by extrapolating generally from there. 140 mn INR, not happening by a long shot.